PRIMITIVE MAN.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 March 1921, Page 10

PRIMITIVE MAN.

ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN RACE. SEEKING THE MISSING LINK IN ASIA.

(By

Fred B. Pitney,

in the New

York Tribune.)

The American Museum of Natural History is sending an expedition to Central Asia to search for the missing link, the legendary, to many the mythological, connection between man and the apes. Why Asia? The oldest indisputably human remains have been found in England and Germany, while the most ancient traces left by man are in the caves of France. The most ancient hum&i relic thus far discovered is the jaw of the socalled Heidelberg man. This is a fossil found near Heidelberg in geological strata which indicate its age as being from 200,000 to 250,000 years. Of still greater age, probably 500,000 years, are the fragments of a skull and jaw and one tooth known as the Piltdown man, discovered in England a few years ago. But the trouble with the Piltdown remains is that it is still a matter of argument whether the Piltdown jaw belongs to the human skull or to the skull of a chimpanzee. Next in point of age after the admittedly human Heidelberg man is the Neanderthal race as the immediate predecessors of modern man. They existed in Western Europe as recently as from 25,000 to 50,000 years ago, and a considerable amount of fossil material of them, including practically complete skeletons, has been found. Anthropologists consider them representing what is probably a distinct species of man, presenting some features never found elsewhere combined in any human race and some quite outside the limits of variation of recent man. The original discovery was made in the Neander Valley, near Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1856. Later discoveries have been made ' in Belgium France, Croatia and Spain and on the Isle of Jersey/ in the English Channel. •

THE CRO-MAGNQN RACE. After the disappearance of the Neanderthal race came, in Europe at any rate, a highly evolved race in no respect inferior to modern man. This was the Cro-Magnon race, which has left its traces in mural pointings and sculptures on the walls of the lime'stone grottdes of Southern France and Spain. The famous procession of mammoths painted and carved by Cro-Mag-non artists is on the walls of the cave of Font de Gaume, Dordogne, France. The immediate progenitors of contemporary man in Europe were the hunters of the New Stone Age. They came from the East, as did the Cro-Magnon race, that may have, exterminated the Neanderthal race.

Thus, with one' exception, all the known remains of man’s ancestors have been found in Europe. The exception ( is the Trinil ape-man, found in Java in 1891 by Eugene Dubois, a Dutch army surgeon. The Trinil fossils consist o? part of a skull, two molar teeth and a thigh-bone. Their age is approximately 500,000 years. But whether they are human or ape is still a matter of conjecture. The top of the cranium is far more human than any known ape cranium. Anthropologists consider it possible that this ape-man was related to the Neanderthal man. This last discovery, the Trinil ape•man, might be considered a good reason for looking in Asia for the missing link except that Java is a long way from the Tibetan plateau. The better reason is that the Cro-Magnon race and the hunters of the New Stone Age both came into Europe from the East LIVED IN TREES. Rev. Chanman Andrews, leader of the expedition going to Asia for the American Museum pf Natural History, says: “Two million years or so ago the Asian plateau, now arid and practically uninhabited, was a densely forested region and the centre of population of the earth. The ancestors of man lived there in the trees. They were apes, though of a species that has been extinct for many hundreds of thousands of years. Man is not descended from any existing species of ape. The ape from which man was evolved disappeared when man came. The ape ceased to exist and man took his place. “Geologic changes brought about climatic changes in the Central Asian plateau. The great forests began to disappear and wide savannas came into existence. The ape ancestors of man began to find it necessary to descend from the trees to find their living. The trees became moi‘e and more stunted, and fewer and fewer in number. The apes had to spend more their *time on the ground. They began to have to fight for their food and for their lives. They had to fight with sticks and stones, and to fight they had to stand erect and use their hands. Gradually they ceased to be apes and became men, walking two feet with erect Vertebral columns.

As the vegetation disappeared from the Central Asian plateau- the animal life migrated, and man followed the animals for means of life. We have been able to trace a distinct route of immigrations from Central Asia northeastward across China and Mongolia, Manchuria and Kamchatka to the Behring sea. The open water of the Behring Sea is of comparatively recent times. Not so very long ago, according to gej’ogic time, North America and Asia were connected by a land bridge across the Behring Sea. The migration from Central Asia of the animal life, followed by the man’s hunting ancestors, crossed by the land bridge to North America and spread over the American continent, north and south. AMERICA’S FIRST INHABITANTS. “We do not know whether this was one of the first routes of migration, bift we do know that the original human inhabitants of America were of a distinctly Mongolian type. The Indians had Mongolian characteristics, and that is all we can say about it. We do not know yet what was the period of the things this expedition will enable us to determine. “Our expedition is going to try to find this first man. the one who came down from the trees and became man because he had to learn to stand upright and fight for his life with sticks .-.nd stones. We are going ' to map China geologically and search its am cient river beds and extinct watercourses and the paths of the glaciers for fossil remains. The second year we will go into Mongolia and continue the search there. We do not know in what of Central Asia man originated.

We only feel certain that it was Central Asia, and we shall begin iq, China and trace back the route of migration to its origin. Our plans will bring us to the Tibetan plateau in the third year. It is more difficult to find fossils in Tibet. The ice cap did not reach the plateau of Tibet, but it was carried by the wind from the pathre of the glaciers as the earth was ground up and pulverised by the immense masses of ice. Yet it is more than likely that it was on the Tibetan plateau that man originated. At any rate, we shall trace back the route of migration, and when we find its source we shall endeavor to find there the fossil remains of the ancestors of man.”

The party that Mr. Andrews wi|l lead will consist ultimately of eight scientists and' one or two photographers, with their native assistants, probably five or six natives apiece. Mr. Andrews will start on February 51, and establish a headquarters and laboratory in Pekin. A month later another zoologist (Mr. Andrews is a zoologist) and Walter Grainger, paleontologist, will join him, and the little party will begin work in China. The second year they will be joined by a third zoologist, another paleontologist and an arehaeolgist will complete the party in the third year, and a total of five years will be spent exploring Central Asia. The Chinese Government will be invited to add as many scientists to the party as they see fit. AFTER STRANGE ANIMALS. Mr. Andrews is not going only for the missing link, however. The expedition will bring back a great collection of Asiatic mammals, living and fossil. Mr. Andrews says: “Not only was Central Asia presumably the cradle of the human race, but also it was the centre of distribution for many of the animals living to-day in Europe, America and other parts of the world. For instance, the caribou, moose, elk or wapiti, the big-horn sheep and the so-called Rocky Mountain goat are all of Asiatic origin. The human problem is closely connected with the animal life both of the present and the past.” While as for living animals, on the Tibetan steppes are enormous yak, snow leopards, giant pandas and beautiful golden monkeys with blue, upturned noses. Some of these species are among the rarest and least known animals in the world. In China is the takin, a creature with a veritable golden fleece, a strange, ox-like, animal that roams the highest mountain valleys and that actually represents an inter-medi-ate stage between the antelbpe ami the goat. In the forests of Manchuria is the long-haired tiger of the Amur River, a tiger larger and finer than the Royal Bengal of India. Specimens of all these animals will be brought back for the Asiatic Hall of the Museum of Natural History.